"...Who is the honest man? He that doth still and strongly good pursue, to God, his neighbor, and himself most true..." Constancy by George Herbert...

Monday, April 06, 2009

Bishop of Bethlehem PA on Northern Michigan

Bishop Paul Marshall responds to the election in Northern Michigan...As a Church we are increasingly a laughing-stock. Not because we welcome lesbian and gay people, and carry on social ministries that enact the sacrifice of Christ on a corporate basis, and certainly not because of our latitude and the conversation it engenders. We are a laughing stock because we do not consistently proclaim a solid core, words as simple as "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," yet "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself."

Increasingly it seems that the Cross has become foolishness in the Church, and our former hallmark teaching of the Incarnation is seldom heard, and less seldom heard to matter. If our embarrassment is going to end, the voices of bishops as clear, traditional, and powerful evangelists need to be raised in the churches and in the market place. Many bishops find a number of techniques that come from the social sciences useful in their ministries, and have significant investment in Eastern meditation -- their qualification to be bishops, however, is as the chief confessors of the creeds and presidents at the sacraments. They are to be unambiguously ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through them...Read it all here...